| Harpooning
the Whale.
With a steam (later diesel) powered whale
catcher boat, coming up behind the whale was a much easier task
than previously, but still not so straightforward as might be
assumed. The whale might dive for many minutes at a time and
surface any where about, the engine speeding up to reach the whale
would alert it and it may dive again, the process could and did
often continue for many hours like this with no guarantee of being
able to catch that particular whale.
But ultimately of course the odds were stacked
greatly in the whalers favour and the whale was in the gunners
sights and the harpoon released. The conditions shown here are
close to ideal for the gunner with a virtually flat sea so neither the
boat nor whale were rising and falling with the waves and little
or no wind to make the sea surface choppy.
Despite the apparently huge target, it was not
so easy to harpoon a baleen whale efficiently so as to ensure a
rapid kill. The harpoon needed to hit the whale just behind the
last rib so that it would go forwards into the body cavity and
explode amongst the vital organs.
Too far forwards and it would hit a rib so
causing it to explode on the surface of the whale, not an
immediately fatal or debilitating blow and more crucially, not
anchoring the whale with the harpoons flukes. Too far backwards
and there was the possibility that the harpoon would shoot
straight through the muscle mass leading to the tail and come out
the other side, so attaching the whale boat to an agonized, but
now enraged and barely debilitated whale. If the harpoon struck
too far forwards and hit the skull, it would simply bounce off.
Very few whales were killed first time, over
decades of whaling, the average number of harpoons it took to kill
a baleen whale was 2.8.
There was danger for the whalers crew at this
time too. Huge amounts of strong thick rope would play out as the
whale sped off. Sometimes despite the enormous strength of the
rope it snapped, the sudden release of many tons of force on a
rope maybe 6 inches in diameter caused it to slash backwards to
the boat. If an unfortunate crew member was caught by this rope it
could easily smash bone and flesh to a pulp.
Sometimes the whale would not swim off forwards,
but would dive and go sideways or backwards, the rope could get
caught around the propeller or be fouled in some other way causing
the rope to need to be cut. The only relatively safe way of
cutting a rope under huge strain was to turn the boat so that the
rope was turned partly around a bollard. Then a crew member -
usually the gunner as he would be captain and had ultimate
responsibility for the catcher boat - would cut the rope. This was
accomplished by standing on the bollard and hitting the rope with
as hard a blow as possible with the largest and sharpest axe
available. All other crew were well out of the way of the flailing
rope and the man who cut the rope was at the eye of the
"storm".
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This account of the killing of
a rorqual is taken from:
Villiers, A. J. "Whaling in the
Frozen South" 1925 - An account written by a journalist of
the very first factory ship expedition to Antarctica by the Sir
James Clark Ross in the 1923/24 season. "At
length, not a quarter of a mile from the mothership, a big
bull rose to blow less than twenty yards away, directly in
front of the waiting Star II's deadly gun. Captain
Iversen, who seemed possessed of an intuitive knowledge of
the movements of whales (hungry or otherwise) under water,
had been long waiting, maneuvering his ship for this chance,
and was standing ready on the little sparred platform behind
the cruel gray gun. His left hand grasped the metal stock
which swung the gun easily on its oiled bearings, and his
right fore finger lightly clasped the trigger. Quietly and
surely he took long and careful aim at the interminable gray
flank turning before him. At last his fore finger twitched
ever so slightly, and with a boom and a roar, a deluge
of flying, twisted pads, a reek of explosive, the great
shell-pointed steel harpoon flew out, and in a flurry of
boiling foam the stricken leviathan sounded deep into the
depths, in a terrible effort to rid himself of the burning
steel. But his doom was sealed. Despite
the explosion in his body of the soft iron shell with which
the harpoon is tipped, the great monster refused to die. As
long as he could he remained below, struggling madly to free
himself, but at length he was forced to the surface again
for air. As he rose, the powerful winch on the Star II quickly
hove in the harpoon line, and as his great back broke the
surface of the sea the gun was loaded again and Captain
Iversen, standing like a waiting matador, was ready to
administer the death thrust. As the sorely wounded whale lay
wallowing and struggling in the bloodstained foam the
captain carefully trained his gun at the heaving target, and
just as the bull turned in a vain effort to dive again,
lifting half of his great bilk out of the water, the gun
spoke once more and a second harpoon flew into the mountain
of blubber and flesh. Instantly he sounded, the harpoon line
running furiously over the bow-wheel. But not for long. The
second shot had told, and scarcely two minutes later the
great whale a mountain of death, suspended on the harpoon
line fathoms below the gently rippling surface. And thus the
first whale died. Slowly we heaved
it up to the surface, the little ship worked alongside,
compressed air was pumped into the body, and a great chain
passed around the small of its tail. Then with her prize
tightly clasped to her cold steel side Star II slowly
steamed to the mothership, and soon the white specked
blue-gray body lay gently heaving in the slight swell fast
alongside, the flukes of its tail cut off and two notches in
what was left telling that two harpoons were required to
dispatch this great monster of the sea. |
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